The Automated Business Assessment and Benchmarking tool for Small and Medium Businesses

Business Owners and Personal Productivity

Business Owners and Personal Productivity

Do you ever consider your personal productivity? When you run your own business, you are taking more risk in the hope of earning a greater reward for your effort, when compared to working for somebody else. But does it always work out this way? The answer is only sometimes. The vast majority of people running their own SME businesses work harder and get paid less than they might get paid for working elsewhere.

In fact, the business owners are often the last to get paid and actually survive on what is left over, because their staff and key suppliers must get paid first to keep the business going. This was not the original dream that the entrepreneur had for the business.

So how can the typical business owner change this situation and increase the odds of getting the financial return they deserve? One way is to increase their personal productivity. With everything being equal, and their underlying business being basically sound, SME business owners can increase the likelihood of getting a fair return on their investment in their business by working smarter and not harder and by consciously focusing on their personal productivity.

So where does one start? In my view, you need to look at the time thieves that are currently preventing you from being fully productive. These will be some or all of the following:

Not getting enough sleep and rest

Arriving in work tired from the previous day

Allowing yourself to become stressed

Bringing work home with you at the end of your work day

Bringing home issues to work with you

Poor diet and thus low energy levels

Lack of proper hydration

Frequent activity switching

Allowing frequent interruptions

Becoming a slave to email

Refusing to have telephone calls filtered and taking every call

Not having a plan for your day

Not having a well considered plan for your business

Getting dragged into minor issues and conflicts that can be resolved by subordinates

Staying in your comfort zone

Micro-managing employees

Not taking time out to refresh and rejuvenate

Listening to the inner voice that may be negative and holding you back

It is important to remember that we can shape the results we get in our lives and our businesses by thinking deeply about them first. Everything that has ever been created in reality in this world has first been a thought in someone’s mind. Look at the inventors of all the technologies we enjoy in the world today and consider that none of these inventions would exist if the inventors had not thought about and conceptualized them first. The lesson here is that we need to be clear in our thinking and clear about what we want to achieve before racing off in what might be the wrong direction.

Daily Rituals

So how do we get into the productivity habit? It all starts with creating daily rituals that put you in the right place physically, mentally and emotionally. Get sufficient rest at night so that you wake up invigorated and ready for the day. Take the first 90 minutes of each day to create the very best circumstances for a productive day.

First task is to rehydrate by drinking a litre of water. Then take some exercise, perhaps a brisk walk, to get your blood flowing for at least 30 to 60 minutes. Next step is to have a nutritious breakfast with as much raw protein as you can tolerate. Caffeine and sugar is not the right way to energize your body – they are a short-term quick fix, which are usually followed by a collapse in energy levels within an hour or two.

Bad Habits to New Habits

Next, we need to develop a determination to overcome our bad habits, many of which will be in the bullet list discussed a few moments ago. The best way to get rid of a bad habit is to develop a new one that supersedes it, and to practice it for 30 days to ingrain it into our daily rituals. It is important to adopt new habits one at a time so that you do not become overwhelmed and risk not completing the 30-day implementation period.

Use Your Time Better

Despite the compelling urge to do so, avoid looking at your email or phone messages at the beginning of the day. Generally speaking, these messages are working to other peoples’ agendas and not yours. Make a decision to work in productive blocks during the day wherein you will not accept interruptions. These blocks involve two 60-minute periods of focused attention followed by 30 minutes of recovery. Adopting this habit for the beginning of the day places you in a position to work on your highest value activities when you are fresh and energized. These activities are the ones that grow your business and your profits the fastest.

Avoid Switching Tasks Frequently

Task switching makes you extremely unproductive, even if you feel that you are getting through a lot. Instead, use the time blocks discussed in the last section. If you can manage 2 or 3 time blocks of 150 minutes per day, you will be astounded by what you will be able to achieve. Do 60 minutes of concentrated and uninterrupted work; take a 5-minute break, then another 55 minutes of concentrated and uninterrupted work. Reward yourself with a 30 minute cooling down period where you get to stretch, rehydrate and perhaps eat a small meal or protein snack. Then you can check your messages and emails before deciding to step into another 150-minute period of high achievement.

Eliminate Friction In Your Mind

We are all bedeviled by our inner voice prompting us with unwanted advice that keeps us in our comfort zone. Internal conflict burns up our energy and our ability to make things happen. Growth only happens outside of our comfort zone and so we must learn to control our willpower. Use your thoughts to visualize the life and business you truly want and use daily rituals and habits to help manifest these thoughts into reality.

Concentrate On Highest Value Activities

My friend, Eben Pagan, developed a concept called the Productivity Pyramid. It is a useful way to look at how you spend your time. There are four different levels to the pyramid and it will serve you to list 3 to 5 activities that you habitually carry out that fit into each level.

The more time that you put into the top level, the better your business will be performing. If you have a lot of activities in the bottom level, you need to stop doing them or if they are necessary for your business, then delegate them to somebody else.

Now focus on the Venn diagram, which is a derivative of the Productivity Pyramid. Your productivity zone lives in the intersection of the 2 circles, so spend as much time there as you can.

Finally, look to the Pareto Principle, wherein you know that 20% of your activities generate 80% of your results, which means that 80% of your activities generate very little of your results. So stop doing the 80% activities or pass them on to someone else. Then look at this again several months down the road and use the same metric. Focus again on the 20% of activities that are generating 80% of your results. DO another cull of the 80% activities. Every time you go through this culling exercise, you will become more and more productive in how you are using your time.

This is a short digest of some of the things you can do to increase personal productivity. Eben Pagan runs a 12-week online course that guides you through some of these personal productivity steps as well as several others. It is called “Wake Up Productive” and I have no hesitation in recommending it to my followers and subscribers.

So what are our clients saying?

I have been an Executive for 20 years and a business consultant providing services to medium and small businesses for 10 years. I have been looking for a tool that will help me quickly analyze my client's current situation and provide a solid, measurable road map for improvement. This product is the answer!! It is accurate and relevant across a broad range of industries and business types. The ROI for my clients? The money spent was returned in under a week. HowsMyBusinessDoing delivered a solid analysis and solid recommendations toward improvement.

Larendee Roos, CEO Roos Consulting, Brooklyn NY

HowsMyBusinessDoing.com provided me with a 50 page report on my business within 30 seconds of completing the survey. It is astonishing how accurate the report is considering that I never engaged with a human management consultant

Gerard Coffey, CEO Floor Design Ltd., Ireland

When I first looked at trying this intelligent business analysis tool I thought that it could not be much use because it is so inexpensive. Boy was I wrong! It just oozes value and costs less than a night out to dinner with my family or a business magazine subscription

Vincent Kennedy, CEO Equashe, Ireland

HowsMyBusinessDoing.com provided me with a 50 page report on my business within 30 seconds of completing the survey. It is astonishing how accurate the report is considering that I never engaged with a human management consultant

Gerard Coffey, CEO Floor Design Ltd., Ireland

This tool really is at the leading edge of business analysis. I haven’t seen anything like this before. The accuracy of the report is uncanny and the cost is miniscule

Ray Kane, CEO Special Steels Ltd, Ireland

I recently undertook the "HowsMyBusinessDoing.com" survey with one of my clients. It was easy to understand and complete in less that two hours. The "36 Month Question" in particular was a very powerful exercise. The detailed 70 page report we received accurately reflected my understanding of the company and supplied me with an independent identification and confirmation of areas we need to work on that will further improve the performance of the company. I see myself using "HowsMyBusinessDoing?" again with other clients going forward and it represents great value for money in my opinion.

Financial analysis of businesses is part of my stock and trade but this is only one part of gaining an understanding of what makes a business successful or not. How the business is managed is the other key component of success. Up until now, this type of business intelligence could only be gathered by interviewing senior executives in a business. With the introduction of HowsMyBusinessDoing on the market, this type of business intelligence can be gathered quickly and simply by any business owner and without the need to hire an external expert.

Greg Colclough, Chartered Certified Accountant

I have been a business lending banker for more than 30 years and have recently used 'HowsMyBusinessDoing' to analyse the businesses of some of my customers. I have to say that the results generated by 'HowsMyBusinessDoing' have consistently matched my own assessment of the businesses concerned. It has the capacity to quickly help business owners improve aspects of their business they may have thought were working well and identify problems that they may not have been aware of.

Pat Errity, Business Lending Banker

HowsMyBusinessDoing is a very good tool which enabled me to glean information about my competitors and other successful businesses, and to find out what best practices they used, so that I could use these practices and implement them into my business. I found HowsMyBusinessDoing a very cost effective way to improve my business and I have been very satisfied with the results.

Paul Kinsella, Owner Kinsella Antiques, Cairns, Queensland, Australia

HowsMyBusinessDoing helped me to get an understanding of the true value of my business, which backed up my decision to sell it and move my life in a new direction. In my opinion, HowsMyBusinessDoing is a tool that can be used in any business, regardless of industry or business size.

Cathal Markey, former CEO SSIL, Ireland

HowsMyBusinessDoing, is a really thorough business assessment tool than can quickly get underneath the skin of your business and point you in the right direction. Not only does it identify the areas where you are weak, it also shows you the strengths you can build on to make your business more profitable.

We made a major shift in what we were doing after using HowsMyBusinessDoing. We made changes in the way we offered our programs and to whom we were going to offer those programs. We shut down a whole sector of one of our program offers and we did that not because we were trying to reduce the size of our business but we did need to make some consolidations to make sure we’ve got the ability to meet the needs of our better end and most reliable clients, and the 28 point Health Check system gave us the ability to find those people and find a way to meet the needs that we saw.

Dr. Frank Hansen, Vice President, Stauron University, Maine

I have used HowsMyBusinessDoing for service organizations, non-profit organizations. I have used it for retail organizations. I also used it in my own business in helping me to determine how my business was structured and how my consulting practice could be improved.

Larendee Roos, CEO Roos Consulting, Brooklyn, NY

Buy Now and Pay in US$US $497

This button is for businesses that are located outside of Europe. No VAT taxes will be charged.

Buy Now and Pay in EuroEuro €375

This button is for businesses located in Europe. VAT tax will be added to the purchase price.